Tuberculosis is a chronic infectious disease, which does not necessarily break out after infection. Even though it breaks out, there may be no symptom appearing immediately. Generally, this disease may break out after several months, years, even decades. Therefore, it is difficult to find tuberculosis in its early stage. Tuberculosis may break out all the year round. The adolescents of 15-35 years old would be at high risk of tuberculosis and may suffer from tuberculosis complicated with diabetes and tuberculosis in pregnancy.
Tuberculosis can be classified into 5 types: Type I, primary tuberculosis, having the syndromes of primary focus in lungs, drainage lymphangitis, pulmonary hilum and/or mediastinal lymphatic tuberculous inflammation; Type II, disseminated tuberculosis, acute, sub-acute and chronic; Type III, infiltrating tuberculosis, manifested as exudative-mainly exudative lesions, proliferation-mainly proliferative lesions, and caseation-including tuberculosis with caseous foci developed from the previous two tuberculosis, caseous pneumonia, and cavities and tuberculoma; Type IV, chronic fibro-cavitative tuberculosis, developed from the infiltrative tuberculosis and having the following pathological characteristics: the wall of the cavity being surrounded by thick fibrous tissue, with visible disseminated foci and repairing fibrous tissue, the pulmonary lobe where the focus is located shrinking, the trachea and the mediastinum moving toward the diseased side, and the remaining lung exhibiting compensatory emphysema; Type V, tuberculous pleurisy.
Traditional Chinese medicine holds that the causes of tuberculosis (phthisis) are nothing more than internal and external causes. The external cause is infection, and the internal cause is deficiency of both Qi and blood, and depletion of Yin and essence. Since the healthy Qi of a person is damaged first and the body of the person is weak without recovery, the Mycobacterium Tuberculosis can invade the weak body and erode the lungs, leading to the deficiency of lung yin. Due to heat impairing pulmonary collaterals, the symptoms of dry cough, hemoptysis, pharynx dryness and the like will appear.” “The body fluid cannot be distributed in case of lung deficiency, and therefore, kidneys may lose the source of life and thus be also affected by the disease. In case of the deficiency of kidney yin and the disturbance of deficiency fire, the symptoms of hectic fever and hot flash, dream emission for men and amenorrhea for women may appear. Moreover, due to the deficiency of kidney-yin, hyperactivity of heart-liver fire and ascending of the heart-liver fire to the lungs to further deplete lung Yin, the symptoms of night sweat and insomnia, dysphoria and rage susceptibility, pain in chest and hypochondrium and the like will appear.” Further, the lung deficiency may hinder self-nourishing of mother Qi, so that spleens can be affected by the disease too. For deficient spleen and weak vital energy, the symptoms of short of breath, weakness, poor appetite, loose stool and the like will appear.”
Western medicine holds that Mycobacterium Tuberculosis is the pathogen of tuberculosis. The Mycobacterium Tuberculosis is a kind of branching bacteria which are less than 4 μm long and less than 0.6 μm wide. The Mycobacterium Tuberculosis is classified into human type, bovine type, rat type and the like, among which the human type is mainly pathogenic to human. Patients with tuberculosis are classified into two types: open and non-open. The phlegm of open patients contains Mycobacterium Tuberculosis, and the Mycobacterium Tuberculosis may infect others via droplet when the patient coughs or sneezes. The open patients are in the minority. The phlegm of non-open patients contains no Mycobacterium Tuberculosis, and the non-open patients are in the majority. However, an open patient may have an interactive relation with a non-open patient. When an infectious tuberculosis patient (open) coughs or sneezes, the sputum containing the Mycobacterium Tuberculosis are spread into the air as droplet. When people having lowered immunity inhales the Mycobacterium Tuberculosis, the mycobacterium tuberculosis may have the opportunity to propagate in lungs to infect the lungs.
At present, most medicaments for treating tuberculosis are western medicines. Although western medicines can kill the Mycobacterium Tuberculosis, but the resistance and tolerance of the Mycobacterium Tuberculosis to medicines will be improved because of mutations of the Mycobacterium Tuberculosis, resulting in significant reduction in pharmaceutical effects of the western medicines after use for a period of time. In addition, the western medicines may have strong toxic and side effects with damage to the patients' health, reducing the constitution and the immunity of the patients and leading to a reduced therapeutic effect and a prolonged course of treatment. The current Chinese herbal medicines for the treatment of tuberculosis are low in toxic and side effects, but have the defects of slow effect, long course of treatment and low cure rate.